Caught in the Twilight
by Dark Mirage1
Summary: Ken Harrison now has Genomex to himself, and is busily planning its future...what could go wrong?


2007Caught in the Twilight6

**2007**

"You're obsessing, Ken."

"Of course I'm obsessing. Eckhart is merely podded, not dead." I'd had another nightmare about Mason Eckhart. I did not understand why Ashlocke did not kill him when we took over Genomex.

Thomasina did not have nightmares. I was having them more and more often.

I lifted the plexiglass lid of the window terrarium, opening the carton of living flies well within the confines of the terrarium, shaking them free of the container, then lowering the cover.

"You'll soon be feeling better, my lovelies." Deep red color lingered on the insect-catching traps of my pets, my prize venus flytraps, but they had not enjoyed a proper meal for a long while. The flies would be sluggish from their long journey, and in short order would be drawn to the sweet scent of the traps.

"Why not just pull the plug on Eckhart?" Thomasina demanded. "No one in Podding Storage will stop you."

Thomasina could be so very direct.

"Gabriel would whine afterwards. He likes to go and stare at Eckhart privately, and he brings mutants to show them that he really does have the man podded."

"Accidents happen."

"So they do. AH! Yum! Etienne got a fly!"

"Ken, your plants are fascinating, but watching those damn traps snap down on flies is more than my stomach can handle."

_Thomasina, you're weak._

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could breed a venus flytrap with traps large enough to allow me to deposit Mason Eckhart whole into one of them? He'd be so shocked. He'd try to crawl out, setting off the little trigger hairs, making the traps clamp down securely about him! Several days later, the traps would open and spit out the indigestibles: the suit, the biopolymer hide, and the silly white wig!"

I found the possibility exciting, if unrealistic. Turning towards Thomasina, I clapped my hands together like a fast-closing trap, still enjoying my botanical fantasy.

Unfortunately, Thomasina was unamused. She was, in fact, wearing a grimace, and wrinkling her nose.

""I'm going to go read the last issue of Spike and Flail." With that, she departed my office. Well, maybe she'd get some good ideas. She just didn't understand my pets. Not many people outside of the carnivore fancy do.

I never heard of Mason Eckhart until the day I was informed TriCorp Botanicals had been acquired by Genomex. I should have paid greater attention to the daily operation of the company. I had no idea the supposed financial wizards I had left to "counting the beans" were such underhanded rascals. They bled TriCorp nearly dry of worth. There wasn't much left except our plant collections and my expertise.

Mason Eckhart didn't sound frightening on the phone, if a trifle formal for an American. However, nothing prepared me for actually meeting the man and discussing TriCorp's involvement in experiments performed upon Dark Star, and coming integration into Genomex.

Armed guards outside of Eckhart's office confirmed my worst fears arising from the brief research I managed before our first meeting. Nothing prepared me for that bleak, deeply chilled office (like my carnivores, I prefer warmth and high humidity) with the too-slick décor…and only God knows going on down past the glass wall on a lower level.

But absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the man himself, even though I thought I knew something about him. Never have I known anyone so perfectly reptilian, so perfectly cold…so peculiar.

No one warned me. I would not have believed them had anyone informed me in painstaking detail what to expect. I do wish someone had said something about those gloves. I didn't know about the biopolymer skin when I walked into that office, so the gloves just seemed peculiar, not a logical reinforcement. Several minutes elapsed before I noticed his wrinkled faux hide. I had no idea he was so…particular about being touched, or even about having his possessions touched. That would have been useful knowledge.

Once he was safely podded, we sealed that office. No one wanted to work in there, anyway; it was always too cold. No one wanted a view of Podding Operations, either.

Gabriel's people tried for nearly a month to break into Eckhart's personal quarters, chiefly out of curiosity, but the safeguards defied their best attempts. They were stunned to discover that entry was keyed to not one but two individuals, and it was awhile before Gabriel shared anything about who that second person was. By then, we could not find her, not even by threatening her friend, Dr Shah, who knew no more than we did, which we confirmed by monitoring her mail and telephone.

All of this came back to me routinely in nightmares, and in those nightmares Eckhart was once again thrown back onto the glass wall, just as Gabriel had actually done with him—but somehow, Eckhart was able to reach out and strangle Gabriel, with one gloved hand. Then he would come for me, at least that is what happened in the tamer nightmares.

Gabriel never developed as an adult all those years in the pod. Why anyone should physically grow in stasis was explained by obscure science but he attained only size, not emotionally maturity. Soon after taking over Genomex, he was content to give over the entire operation to me while he moved his odd tribe of assorted mutants to a gloomy old house. I immediately worked up plans to move all TriCorp research to the Genomex location, including the building of the greenhouses.

Just walking outside on the grass to see where stakes had been driven to show the future location of greenhouses made me feel good, so I decided to leave the building and take a stroll in the sun. That this was the very same ground Eckhart had forced Thomasina and me to hand clean of Easter egg hunt debris just a few months before was particularly satisfying. He even came outside and watched, hands clasped behind his back, sometimes pointing out trash we missed. What a miserable man. Someone said his family was southern. He must have descended from a long line of overseers.

That was the day Thomasina decided she hated him, no matter what kind of easy money her cousins were making catering those dreadful community dinners.

Outside, it was warm and bright, the opposite of the Genomex interiors. I could smell freshly mowed grass, disturbed earth, and all the volatiles that fill the air in the late summer months before frost kills tender green growth. I walked out along the stakes, connected with taut string showing where the greenhouses would stand. I lost myself in the dream of creating a botanical research facility without equal on earth, not in private industry, academia, or government.

I would recover my Rafflesia researches, finding new plants in the wild to destroy the ones lost in misadventures with Adam's miserable freaks, now lying low with Gabriel free. They would never disrupt my work again. Eckhart was completely correct about what an annoyance they could be. I would finally be able to put sufficient funding towards the Rafflesia work, as well as a half-dozen others crying out for adequate investigation. Gabriel didn't know enough to question anything, and was far too arrogant to ask questions and learn. I have to give Eckhart credit for recognizing the limits of his expertise and factual knowledge; he was no scientist, and never pretended to be one.

I settled down on a park bench placed outside so I could sit and contemplate the future Harrison Laboratories and Greenhouses. Bees frequented the flower bed behind me; the sun was warm without being hot on the back of my head. In short order my mind went soft and fuzzy, to the state just above drowsiness, my thoughts full of greenhouses growing the odd, the unusual, the useful.

"That will never happen."

The voice woke me to full alertness. There was no mistaking _that_ voice. I could even imagine the look in his eyes, flat-looking eyes so much like those of a shark behind those lenses.

Some fragment of dream-state must have leaked into my thinking. Sometimes that happens. Mason Eckhart was podded in a basement behind me, chilled almost to death, metabolism crawling so slowly a breath was measured in hours. The storage area he occupied was rarely left unwatched, either by my security or by mutant tourists, come to gawk at Eckhart.

I drifted back to my pleasant plans, and caught myself nodding.

"Ashlocke is insane. Trust him? You may as well trust the Devil. You're a great fool, Dr Harrison."

I was not going to doze off again, if it meant hearing that voice in my head. I was not given to hearing voices, and the sensation was disturbing. I rose from the bench, and strolled briskly to the end of where the first year's construction would end, and looked back towards Genomex, wondering whether the rooftops were strong enough to support still more greenhouses.

"_And what will you do when my superiors come asking about me? How long can you lie to them?"_

Now, that was disturbing. I was wide awake, fully alert.

Someone had to be playing a not so amusing joke at my expense, directing audio at me in some subtle fashion. A lot of people still working here knew how Eckhart had treated me; for some of them, now unemployed, it had been an open joke. I believed I had successfully purged the staff of such troublemakers. Some had been superior workers, but I could not have disloyalty.

Anyone willing to play this kind of unfunny prank was likely to tamper with my beloved pets as well.

The popular notion among mutants was that Mason Eckhart was some sort of rogue, acting independently. That was pure fiction, naturally. All of his activities he reported in detail to his superiors; he never would have received the kind of funding required for such an operation any other way. I had reviewed those reports, including disparaging remarks made about TriCorp's potential usefulness and about me.

I did not dare repeat to Thomasina the things he placed in her permanent personnel file. She would have taken a fire axe to his stasis pod. Thomasina could be incredibly impulsive.

I fought off the initial impulse to run to stasis storage, and be certain that Eckhart remained securely podded. Anyone playing a joke would be watching for me to do that very thing. I turned and made my way to the nearest door, which happened to be nowhere near stasis storage.

By an indirect route, I made my way to the place I had last seen Mason Eckhart. Four twentysomethings, all probably misbegotten Children of Genomex, were standing around his pod, giggling. Obscenities drifted my way.

I'd seen this behavior before. The real obscenities lay beneath their feet, the failed, horrific experimentations of Breedlove and Kane. Some of those failures Eckhart had put to rest in a surprisingly civilized fashion after discovering them. I had reviewed those records as well. That he had such a spiritual dimension was a shock to me when I learned of it. These barbarians hovering over his stasis pod probably did not have a spiritual impulse among them.

One of them spotted me and gestured to his companions to leave. As they strolled towards the exit, I overheard what one of them said.

"Do you know who that is? That's the guy who betrayed Eckhart."

_The Guy Who Betrayed Eckhart? Is that all I am?_

I strode up to Eckhart's pod and stared down at him.

I'm alive, and you're…caught in the twilight.

As always, Eckhart's eyes were wide open. Some technical aspect of stasis required this, but seeing someone 99.993 dead with their eyes open was disturbing. Covers should be placed over such eyes.

Weeks had elapsed since I had last checked on Mason Eckhart. Once in stasis, people weren't supposed to change, but his expression was subtly different. Looking at those staring, unblinking, unfocused eyes was distressing before; now the eyes were _angry._

I glanced around. The room was empty. If I pulled the plug, I'd be caught on surveillance video, but there was no one watching and alive to stop me.

But how would I explain my action?

I cursed myself, then turned and walked briskly away from Eckhart's pod. I had nearly reached the door when I was brought up short by

"For your betrayal, for the life you destroyed, for what you have stolen, there will be a price. I swear it."

I ran from the room. I did not stop running until I reached the more frequented corridors.

At first I made my way towards Thomasina's office, located near the fron main entrance of the complex close to personnel and accounting, well away from the labs. Passing by the Eleanor Singer Memorial Fountain --a disgusting, sentimental piece with the figures of a half dozen happy, smiling, romping, healthy Children of Genomex-- I stopped and watched water flow over their joyous bronze faces. I realized Thomasina would not only not believe me, but would laugh when I told her what happened.

I turned and walked the other way to my own office and drew up a chair to my venus flytrap window garden, and talked to my beloved 'traps. They would listen, they would not laugh, and they would never conclude I was hallucinating or becoming unbalanced.

I rose from my chair, and secured another carton of flies, deciding to reward my pretty pets with a true feast.


End file.
